Nate and Neil

Nate Chinen was one of the first members of the Writers House staff--and circa 1997-98 was a real denizen at 3805 Locust. He founded and led the KWH band, "The Virgin House Quartet," which played in our Arts Cafe every late Thursday night for several years. Nate is now an art critic and is emerging as one of the go-to guys for the New York Times Arts page. Now he reviews Neil Young's NYC concert. And our Al Filreis blogs a bit about this.

Writers without Borders

Our final reading of the 2008 Writers without Borders series is Breyten Breytenbach, the acclaimed South African poet, novelist, memoirist and painter. Breytenbach will join us at 6:00 PM on Thursday, December 4th. No RSVP required!

meisel gallery

On November 13, several Writers House-affiliated staff, students, and alumni, convened in SoHo at the Meisel Gallery for our seventh annual Writers House New York. Every year since 2002, Susan and Louis Meisel have hosted a benefit in their gallery to support the Writers House and after a harrowing Philly-to-New York van ride through rain and wind, the KWH-team was especially delighted to see so many friends gathered to welcome us.

homecoming at the KWH

Visit the Writers House on November 1st for Homecoming!

3:00 PM – 4:30 PM: Stop by our OPEN HOUSE for coffee and informal conversation with fellow alumni and members of the Writers House community.

4:30 PM: Our Alumni Authors Series presents EXTREME SPORTSWRITING: a raucous, full-contact panel discussion about the future of sports and journalism with STEFAN FATSIS (C'85), BUZZ BISSINGER (C'77), JON WERTHEIM (Law '97), and moderator STEPHEN FRIED (C'79). EXTREME SPORTSWRITING is co-presented by Kelly Writers House, The Nora Magid Mentorship Prize, and the Penn Alumni Club of Philadelphia.

RSVP to whhomecoming@writing.upenn.edu.

over at PennSound

Things are humming at PennSound, the digital archive of poetry and poetics co-directed by Charles Bernstein and Al Filreis, and managed by Mike Hennessey. Mike writes the "PennSound Daily" which provides detailed commentary on recent updates to the archive and offers just enough history and context to invite you in for more. The Writers House provides a regular percentage of material for the archive -- but PennSound goes broad and deep and all over, curating material from other vibrant places and decades. Dig around John Ashbery's author page for readings from New York the 60s through Haverford in 2008 or visit the Segue Reading series page to hear readings from the Bowery Poetry Club.

our new website

You've noticed (we hope) that we've been changing our website. Thanks to the lovely design work of Bill Sulit of fusion:communications, the complex re-coding work of CPCW IT & Multimedia Manager Mark Lindsay (with help from student webmasters, especially Kathryn Lipman), and the gorgeous photography of Writers House documentarians such as John Carroll, we're slowly reworking each part of our site, page by page. This process may take quite a while and there are sure to be glitches along the way. Don't hesitate to get in touch (wh@writing.upenn.edu) if you find something strange or if you see something you like. As always, we'd love to hear from you. Here are some cool pages: Writers House Fellows, featured visitors, and current student highlights. Look around!

KWH-TV: Tune in on Thursday

Thanks to an anonymous gift that allowed us to acquire state-of-the-art video equipment, we can now easily webcast Writers House events, whatever's going on in the Arts Cafe: readings, seminars, recording sessions, happenings, the whole range. (We've produced webcasts since 1999, but with the new camera and specially configured computer, we've essentially automated the process.) In other words, by simply logging in from home or work, you can see LIVE VIDEO of what's happening here. We hope you'll tune in. The next KWH-TV event is Thursday, October 16th at 6:00 PM: Tom Moon and Anthony DeCurtis will discuss Moon's book, 1000 Recrodings to Hear Before You Die. To listen in, visit our instructions page. If you have Quicktime already installed on your computer, you'll just click "Start webcast" from this page at 6:00 PM or just after.